The best thing we’ve tried from the Marie Callender’s line so far is probably their Sweet & Sour Chicken. This batch of food is surprisingly good — especially considering this is an item that so many frozen food makers get wrong.
So we crossed our fingers and hoped lightning might strike twice with the Marie Callender’s Sweet Pineapple Chicken Teriyaki Bowl, which we’re reviewing today.
First off, we must cook it. This one actually takes a bit longer than we were expecting, with six to seven minutes (we found six to be fine) of microwave time suggested by the box (and more than that for the oven). It’s not a terrible amount of time, but it’s still a bit longer than average for a microwavable frozen meal. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
So let’s start with the chicken. We went into this expecting some sort-of-passable white meat here, but what we got was surprisingly good. This chicken in rich and juicy, and it has a great consistency and texture. It’s not gristly, and it’s not soggy. It’s also pretty consistent (we often find the chicken portion of frozen meals to be soggy in some places and hard in others — that’s not a problem here).
We also have to give props to the water chestnuts in this dish. These are really great, and they have a lovely crunch to them. The portion size is pretty decent as well. We weren’t expecting this to be a major portion of the dish, but we ended up finding five or six sizeable chunks, which is more than we’d expected.
The teriyaki sauce is blander than we’d hoped though, especially since it’s supposed to be a sweeter sauce. There are real pineapple chunks mixed in, and any bite you get with pineapple pieces will be quite good. However, the weakness of the sauce rears its ugly head whenever you eat a bite without pineapple.
The calorie count is 350, which isn’t super bad, and there’s 760 mg of sodium. While the sodium level is a bit high, that’s pretty average for a frozen meal. In fact, it’s actually a little low for a teriyaki dish. Of course, we didn’t find this to be super filling, so you might end up needing to pair it with something to make a full meal — in which case you’ll be adding calories (and sodium). If this fills you up, though, those numbers don’t look too bad.
The Marie Callender’s Sweet Pineapple Chicken Teriyaki Bowl is just alright. It features some fantastic chicken and some impressive water chestnuts, but the sauce just doesn’t have enough flavor to carry the rest of the dish. It’s a shame, because with a better sauce, this meal could have been great.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen meal, check out our package scans below.
